Electricity-
searing through
every vein,
body brimming with
voltage, head to toe,
lightning
that strikes
every nerve simultaneously;
blinding, white hot pain
-
then blackness.

Flames-
the piercing spasms
of ten thousand sunburns,
combined with
the unbearable heat
of smothering summer darkness
licks slowly
up
       up
              up
your legs,
choking, choking
on dry smoke
and the ash of your own body;
screams, melting flesh, can't breathe, can't breathe,
-
then blackness.

Nails-
cleaving wrists
and feet,
invasive, bone-deep,
soul-deep
pangs, aches, agony,
as they punch out the other side
and iron
meets beam,
locking limbs in places.
Then lifting,
lifting,
lifting,
until you're
finally,
horribly,
upright,
hanging by your wrists,
iron grating
and grinding
against bone,
slowly,
oh so slowly,
suffocating under your own weight,
as muscle and sinew
convert from
allies
to traitors,
turning on you,
compressing,
and eventually crushing,
your lungs;
minutes          hours                      days
-
then blackness.

Oh, humanity.
Oh, terribly, cruelly creative
humanity.
So many torturous ways
to ****,
to execute
each other.

- the chair
- the stake
- the cross
- countless, countless others
each more brutal
than the last.
Oh, humanity.

Yet somehow...

the cross left
this darkness
for light,
a symbol of hope for
millions.
Men, women, children
everywhere
draw hope from
the cross.

WHY?

Why?
Because
we know
who it has
murdered - killed - slaughtered
massacred - executed - slain
sacrificed
but didn't
destroy;
who it
failed
to defeat.
The cross
couldn't defeat
HIM.